„She has been condemned to death by hanging. A manmay escape this death by becoming the hangman, awoman by marrying the hangman. But at the presenttime there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.There is only a death, indefinitely postponed. This isnot fantasy, it is history.“

— Margaret Atwood

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„In order to avoid her death, her particular death, withwrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry thehangman.“
— Margaret Atwood
„NOTES: Jean Cololère, a drummer in the colonial troops at Québec, was imprisoned for duelling in 1751. In the cell next to his was Françoise Laurent, who had been sentenced to hang for stealing. Except for letters of pardon, the only way at the time for someone under sentence of death to escape hanging was, for a man, to become a hangman, or, for a woman, to marry one. Françoise persuaded Cololère to apply for the vacant (and undesirable) post of executioner, and also to marry her.—Condensed from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume III, 1741-1770“
— Margaret Atwood
„He was not condemned to death, freedom awaitedhim. What was the temptation, the one that worked?Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose lifehe had saved, who had seen down into the earth buthad nevertheless followed him back up to life. It washis only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,for if he became the hangman the others woulddespise him. He was in prison for wounding anotherman, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.This too is history.“
— Margaret Atwood
„Trapped in life, only escape I know is death.“
— E.M.S
„Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.“
— H.L. Mencken
„I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.“
— Socrates
„And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this … Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.“
— John Ronald Reuel Tolkien